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The Right Conditions for Success: Story of an Urban High School
As part of a four-campus project in a large urban school district, one high school stood out in terms of its comprehensive school reform and results. The four Houston, Texas, high schools in were under-performing academically. In 2006, the four schools joined the Texas High School Project as a cluster approach to implementing the High Schools That Work (HSTW) school improvement framework. While all of the schools were able to make improvements, school and teacher leaders at Evan E. Worthing Senior High School created all the right conditions for improvement and reaped substantial rewards in improved student achievement and school and classroom practices.
Worthing enrolls approximately 1,000 students, with a student population that is 91 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic and 1 percent white. Nearly two-thirds of Worthing’s students are economically disadvantaged. Located in an urban area with other under-performing schools, Worthing has struggled to attract highly qualified teachers and has experienced significant faculty turnover from year to year.
Despite its challenges, Worthing was able to improve student achievement substantially and create an engaging and supportive culture of high expectations. It did so by creating key conditions that allowed the school to maximize the effects of school improvement coaching and the HSTW support services:
- A strong leadership team, including a principal and dean of instruction who were committed to the improvement effort and willing to take risks
- A master schedule with weekly early dismissal time that allowed for whole-faculty, schoolwide professional development
- A faculty that knew it needed help and was willing to try new things
The Improvement Plan
In 2006 and 2007, Worthing focused on improving instruction. In 2008, the focus was on deeply implementing the full HSTW design. The sequence of services, including coaching and professional development, was aimed at personalizing the learning environment, improving the rigor of teaching and learning, and creating an effort-based culture with high expectations and teachers working together. Other areas of emphasis during the three years of the grant cycle were reading and writing strategies for learning across the curriculum, improved science instruction, numeracy, and raising the complexity of assignments in academic and career/technical classes.
Creating the Right Conditions
Condition 1: Strong Leadership for High Expectations
As Worthing began its school improvement effort, it had to navigate several challenges — state and district mandates, multiple professional development providers and the requirement that school leaders receive approval for any changes the school proposed to make. These challenges impeded the school’s ability to base improvement initiatives on specific campus and student needs.
One key factor in Worthing’s ability to address these challenges was the district’s hiring of an outside executive principal to work with the school leadership teams in all four schools as they embraced best practices to build the culture for improvement. With the leadership and support of the executive principal, Worthing was able to make some significant changes without prior permission from region or district leaders. The cluster approach allowed school leaders and teachers to take ownership of their own problems and to move decisively to implement proven school and classroom practices.
The school principal and dean of instruction welcomed the opportunity to redesign the school and were dedicated to the improvement of student achievement at the campus. They understood the value of creating a strong, clearly stated mission of high expectations and they made sure that all other service providers worked in tandem with the HSTW consultant so that a consistent message and a clear vision were presented to all stakeholders. They demonstrated to the faculty and students that student learning trumped every other consideration in school initiatives and ensured that all resources — budget, personnel, time, equipment and materials — remained focused on advancing student achievement.
The administrative team understood that real change had to begin in the classrooms and it involved all teachers in improvement initiatives. Worthing leaders attended required and voluntary meetings and workshops to keep up with recommended best practices. When presenting information to the faculty, students, parents and other stakeholders, the team members presented a united front, clearly focused on high expectations. Most importantly, they consistently monitored and analyzed data to make informed adjustments to improvement efforts.
Condition 2: Schoolwide Professional Development
Worthing leaders worked with the executive principal to ensure that the faculty received regular, consistent and sustained professional development. The campus received permission to create professional development time by dismissing students two hours early every Wednesday and to making up the instructional time on the other days of the week. The early dismissal gave faculty members time to learn new strategies, meet with teams (both academic and non-academic) and develop plans for implementing new school improvement initiatives. Worthing’s A-B block schedule also allowed for additional professional development opportunities, providing common planning time to interdisciplinary teams each day.
Professional development was highly organized and included modeling strategies within Worthing classrooms. Consultants from HSTW, the state, the district, the region and outside providers worked together to make sure that teachers did not become overwhelmed by too many initiatives and too many presentations. All teachers, counselors, administrators and support personnel participated in professional development activities so that everyone could reinforce efforts to implement changes.
Condition 3: Teacher Commitment to Motivate Students to Meet Standards
Teachers at Worthing were committed to improving student achievement, following the example set by school leadership. Faculty members were sensitive to struggling students’ need for second chances in mastering rigorous coursework, so the school implemented a redo policy to improve student learning. Through teamwork during several professional development Wednesdays, the teachers formulated an agreed-upon redo policy that required students to redo work until it met standards and rewarded students with a higher grade when work improved.
To ensure students would have opportunities to redo work without interfering with regular instruction, the school created a dedicated “embedded enrichment period” within the daily schedule. The embedded enrichment period rotated by block so every subject area would have an extra-help session every eight school days. Teachers developed a list of 50 ways to use the embedded enrichment period to help students improve their learning without assigning more work that might put struggling students further behind. Administrators, school leaders and the school improvement consultant monitored the use of the embedded enrichment period. Over time, teachers became more creative and adept at using the time productively.
To document the results of the redo policy and other extra help interventions, a list of students with three or more failures was distributed to teachers. This list included a catalogue of the intervention strategies that were used with each student so teachers could see what interventions were being used by other teachers for students in their classes. The list also showed teachers whether students were improving each grading period. By the end of the first semester, the numbers of F's earned by Worthing’s students decreased by more than 850. This early victory motivated both teachers and students.
Frequent and regular professional development sessions helped to train the whole faculty in using data to make instructional decisions. The faculty studied HSTW Assessment results to determine areas needing improvement. They also learned how to conduct internal surveys of students and to use survey data to improve their practices. The HSTW Site Development Workshop and subsequent work of teacher focus teams built faculty ownership of school challenges and motivation to implement proven practices to address them.
During the 2008-2009 school year, the teachers committed to two schoolwide projects focused on engaging students in challenging and relevant work. The first was a “word wall” initiative. Teachers displayed literacy strategies, pictorial representations, graphic organizers and other forms of student work in classrooms and hallways. The word walls showed teachers the types of work that students were completing in other classes, motivated teachers to assign more complex and creative work, and encouraged students to complete quality work to display throughout the school.
Another all-school project was a hands-on, team-based interdisciplinary project assigned during the month of May in both 2008 and 2009. Teachers formed cross-disciplinary teams based on topics of interest to students and relevance to their subject areas. They met during professional development time to develop the project assignments, including rubrics that defined academic expectations and grade values. Several of the projects had environmental themes; others were performance-based. All projects required students to present their completed work before an audience. At the end of the school year, teachers presented their students’ projects to the whole faculty and they critiqued one another by voting for the best projects in various categories, and provided comments on how the process could be improved upon for next year.
For one project, students in speech, English and social studies classes studied five memorable persuasive speeches from history, analyzing the speeches for techniques of persuasion. They then wrote original persuasive speeches that employed those techniques and presented their speeches before a large audience. Another project, Converting Green to Gold (the school colors), included a “green week” during which students distributed tips for saving energy and resources and found new ways to conserve resources and money, both at home and at school. Individual projects included a paper recycling project showing costs saved and an online ecology newsletter. Since every member of the faculty was involved in the projects, students had eight projects to do during the month of May — weeks that traditionally are viewed as “down time” after state testing.
Results
After working with HSTW for three years, Worthing showed remarkable improvements in student achievement. From 2005 (the year before the grant began) to 2009, the percentage of students meeting standards on the state reading assessment increased from 63 percent to 83 percent schoolwide. The percentage meeting standards on the state mathematics assessment jumped from 21 percent to 50 percent. These gains were greater than the average gains of both the district and the state.
As the faculty and school principal worked together to improve school and classroom practices, the overall school culture improved not only for students, but also for adults in the building. Following the 2007 efforts to improve instruction, the school found fewer teachers leaving each year. Teacher turnover decreased from approximately 15 teachers in 2006 to only three teachers in 2009. The school environment now is one of continuous improvement.
Four Strategies Combine to Raise Graduation Rates
The renovation of the 50-year-old Greeneville High School building in Greeneville, Tennessee, prompted school leaders to redesign the interior as well as the exterior of the school. To do so, they created a school improvement plan designed to boost student achievement and graduation rates.
"Although the curriculum includes AP and dual enrollment courses, our graduation rate had fallen to 76 percent with the new AYP [Adequate Yearly Progress] calculations," said Assistant Principal Vivian Franklin. School administrators needed a plan to convince the faculty to take ownership of the problem.
Leaders and teachers implemented a four-pronged approach to increasing graduation rates: 1) credit recovery, 2) the Graduation Access Program (GAP), 3) the Success Academy for freshmen and 4) the Power of I grading policy.
The credit recovery program allows students to improve grades of F in courses they have completed. These students meet after school for two hours four days a week. The school provides transportation home after the sessions. The program is also available during the summer. Students seeking to recover credit use a computer-based curriculum system that diagnoses their needs and requires them to complete only the material that they have not mastered. As a result of the program, fewer students are enrolling in summer school and repeating courses.
The Graduation Access Program (GAP) provides an alternative path for students to earn high school diplomas. Students who exhaust other ways to earn a high school diploma can enroll in GAP to meet state graduation requirements and earn a state diploma. During the first two years, 24 of 26 students who enrolled in GAP completed the program and obtained their diplomas.
The Success Academy is the freshman academy. Ninth-graders attend classes in one section of the building. The only exception is science, which has all students studying in new laboratories in the science wing. The fact that freshmen come into contact with older students when they take science classes away from the academy helps ease the transition from the ninth to the 10th grade.
Under the Power of I grading policy, students receive a grade of I for Incomplete if they fail to turn in an assignment or if the assignment does not meet C-level standards. Students receive tutoring to relearn the material and improve their grades.
The graduation rate at Greeneville High School has climbed steadily since the school introduced the new strategies, increasing from 75.7 percent in 2004 to 96.9 percent in 2008. "Greeneville High School will continue to work on improving the graduation rate each year while we strive to maintain a rigorous curriculum that prepares students for postsecondary placement into colleges and universities, careers and/or the military," Franklin said.
(Adapted from 09V06w, Schools With Higher Graduation Rates Work Hard to Engage Students in Learning)
Struggling School Joins High Schools That Work to Improve Achievement and Graduation Rates
The graduation rate at Dalton High School (DHS) in Dalton, Georgia, was 56.5 percent in 2002-2003. The needs of many students, including the school's large enrollment of Hispanic students, were not being met. The result was that almost half of students entering the ninth grade were not graduating four years later.
Dalton High School's enrollment is 59 percent Hispanic, 29 percent white, 7 percent black, 3 percent Asian and 2 percent multiracial. Seventy percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. The large percentage of Hispanic students has resulted primarily from families seeking jobs in the carpet industry that is centered in the Dalton area.
The new superintendent of the Dalton City School System enrolled DHS in the HSTW school improvement initiative. A new administrative team at the high school set to work involving the faculty in implementing the HSTW Key Practices, including upgrading academic and career/technical courses, offering extra help and providing adult support to encourage students to stay in school and graduate. The result has been a steady increase in the graduation rate, from 72.6 percent in 2006 to 73.6 percent in 2007 and 77.4 percent in 2008.
The percentage of DHS 11th-graders passing the Georgia High School Graduation Test in mathematics on the first attempt has remained steady — 95 percent in 2005-2006, 94 percent in 2006-2007 and 96 percent in 2007-2008 — while the percentage in science has grown substantially from 76 percent in 2005-2006 to 83 percent in 2006-2007 and 91 percent in 2007-2008.
By setting an example of higher student achievement, Dalton High School has become one of 25 schools in the nation chosen as a HSTW Pacesetter School for 2008-2010.
No More Low-Level Courses
The first step the school took was to eliminate all low-level courses. All students complete a college-preparatory-level academic curriculum. College-prep completers take four English/language arts courses; four mathematics courses, Algebra I and higher; and four science courses, including biology, physical science and chemistry plus one higher-level science elective. Career/technical (CT) completers take four English/language arts courses; four mathematics courses, Algebra I and higher; and three science courses, including biology, physical science and chemistry. Many CT students take four science courses. Dalton is now an International Baccalaureate (IB) school and offers an increasing number of Advanced Placement (AP) courses.
Eliminating low-level courses in one fell swoop meant the school needed to move quickly to establish a support system to help students meet higher standards. Inclusion has become the school's largest department to ensure that co-teaching between regular teachers and special education teachers is available in the classroom. This change has required early and ongoing professional development to help teachers master the concept of co-teaching and learn to deliver the most effective instruction.
Teachers are meeting together and using new strategies to get better results. Mathematics teachers participated in professional development to learn how to deliver differentiated instruction. The school adopted a policy of mastery learning that has benefited students by ensuring that they learn the material covered in the first semester before moving on to the second semester.
The Project Lead The Way® engineering program at DHS has served as a model for other programs of how to integrate academic and CT studies to raise achievement. Students complete rigorous mathematics and science courses along with specialized courses that will help them prepare for careers in engineering and other high-tech fields.
Support for Ninth-Graders
Incoming ninth-graders who have failed to meet the standards of the state-mandated Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests in reading and mathematics attend a summer bridge program to increase their academic skills before making the critically important transition to high school studies. During the ninth grade, students may be placed in a special mathematics class where they get the help they need to move forward with their classmates.
Another program geared specifically to ninth-graders is Dalton High School 101. In the first semester of social studies, a guidance counselor and the school's graduation coach visit the class once a week to offer survival tips for success in high school and to encourage students to take advantage of extra help and other resources available to them from the school and the community.
Extra Help to Meet Standards
Students are surrounded by a variety of extra-help options to support them in meeting higher expectations. Additionally, assistant principals and guidance counselors serve as adult mentors to meet with small groups of students and their parents to plan and implement programs of study that will challenge and engage students and prepare them for further education and careers.
Career/Technical Education
Dalton High School has taken a giant step to help students graduate in four years by providing high-quality career/technical studies that add meaning to their lives now and in the future. The 12 career/technical programs offered at the school include new and updated courses that more closely match the employment opportunities available in the community. New courses include culinary arts, graphic arts, video production, criminal justice and marketing. Students can seek industry certification in every career field where such recognition exists. CT students are encouraged to take a sequence of four courses to earn a dual seal on their high school diplomas.
One key to Dalton's career/technical success is the involvement of students in promoting career/technical education to other students. Marketing students developed a campaign to attract more students to CT studies. Students produced a feature on CT pathways to show on the school's closed-circuit television system. They also talk with middle grades students about the benefits of taking CT courses in high school.
The schools principal emphasizes that all improvement decisions are based on data. "In comparing today with six years ago, we know that teachers are increasing their use of data to guide their instruction," she said. Another big change is that teachers are hired on the basis of whether their beliefs match those of the school — that expectations should be high and all students can learn.
(Adapted from 09V13w, A Tale of Three High Schools: Using the High Schools That Work Key Practices to Raise Student Achievement)
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